Each year on the second Sunday of November, the Queensland Society of Model and Experimental Engineers (QSMEE) holds their annual Trophy Day. On this day, members' efforts for the past year (or ten) are judged by a panel of their peers and awards made in appropriate categories. Simultaneously, Members, their guests, and the general public are treated to a BBQ, displays, and rides behind live steam, "diesel" electric, and pure electric locomotives of all gauges while enjoying Queensland's famous eye-searing sunlight and paint blistering temperatures (above 30° in 2011), none of which appears to inhibit attendance, nor enthusiasm in the least.

The Photos below show some of the increasing amount of IC engine activity at this year's event, plus a few items of tooling which caught my fancy. As usual, the number, variety, and standard of workmanship evident in the clocks and locomotives was inspiring, but as these pages are supposed to focus on IC engines, we omit them except to pay passing tribute to their builders as Model Engineers of the first order.

Click on photos to view more detail at a larger size

Photo 1	Photo 2	Photo 3	Photo 4
Photo 5	Photo 5a	Photo 6	Photo 6a
Photo 7	Photo 8	Photo 9	Photo 10
Photo 11	Photo 12	Photo 13	Photo 14

Random Notes

Photo 9

This collection of bits and pieces was put together by builder of the Hit 'n miss engine of photos 5 and 6 to produce the spiral gears the engines required. The threaded rod in the top right is for demonstration purposes, representing the mill spindle with a standard involute cutter mounted. The angle table is set to the spiral angle required. One stepper motor, connected to the ER16 collet holder, rotates the gear blank while another moves the assembly along the plane of the angle table, thus tracing the spiral path of one tooth valley. A third motor is responsible for putting on and removing the "cut" depth for the gear, allowing the first motor (driving the blank) to advance to the next tooth. The computer runs the CNC software which drives the steppers through the box in the middle which contains the high current stepper power supply and drivers. The designer built the entire thing from "scrap", including the computers, having only to buy the steppers (grudgingly ).

Photos 12 and 13

This R1830 Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp Radial is being built by Mr M Gurlke from plans by Bob Roach and castings by Bruce Satra. We've seen one of these before, completed by Mr Ron Harris (UK). The display had power connected to the prop pitch motor so visitors could watch it power from full pitch to full feather. All who saw it were impressed by the number of tapped 2-56 holes in the crankcase and one can only imagine the tense moments as the last ones were tapped—we are assured that no taps were broken in the manufacture of this crankcase!

Photos 11 and 14

From the same builder, a P&W R985 Wasp Junior, again from plans by Bob Roach and castings by Bruce Satra. Beautiful work and a tribute to the builder, the designer, and Bruce's ability as a tool and die maker to produce the dies for those finely finned cylinder heads.